- Their own BROTHERS accused them of murdering their father for his £7million fortune
- Now the tables have turned and they want revenge for the misery they’ve endured for almost a decade
LAWSUIT – Helen and Alexandra Veevers once had a vague notion that by the time they reached their mid-30s they would be secure in their careers and married with children.
The ‘Patricide’ Case
Instead, as they watched their friends settle down, the sisters were forced to set aside their modest ambitions and spend more than a decade defending themselves against an extraordinary claim – patricide.
Allegation Against Them
Helen, now 36, and Alexandra, 34, along with their mother, were accused of poisoning their property tycoon father Harry Veevers for his £7million fortune.
It was, they say, a wicked lie, a fantasy concocted by their older half-brothers Richard, 47, and Philip, 45, from their father’s first marriage, to deny them their inheritance.
The two sisters, from Manchester, insisted their 64-year-old father’s heart attack on Valentine’s Day 2013 in Kenya was due to natural causes alone.
Dead Body was Even Exhumed
Yet the Kenyan authorities entertained the brothers’ claims of foul play and exhumed Mr Veevers 11 months later.
Analysis of tissue and soil samples produced conflicting results. It would be left to an inquest in the coastal city of Mombasa to decide if he had been poisoned.
It was Like a Hollywood Movie
To the sisters’ huge distress, the allegations were reported round the world. And the story of feuding and murder among wealthy Kenyan expats has drawn inevitable comparisons with the White Mischief case of 1941, dramatised in a novel and Hollywood movie.
At stake was more than Mr Veevers’ estate. Helen and Alexandra, and their mother Azra Parvin Din, 75, were warned that if the ruling went against them they could face criminal charges – and the terrifying possibility of a jail sentence in a country where prison conditions are said to be among the worst in the world.
What Court Ruled
Oddly, the verdict caught both sides’ legal teams by surprise – they were expecting a routine case management hearing. By chance, Alexandra was in court that morning because she and her sister were desperate to find out when a ruling was expected.
Suddenly a court official began reading from a sheet of paper containing magistrate Charles Ndegwa’s entire assessment of the long-running case.
Alexandra felt ‘my heart beat out of my chest’. The official told the court: ‘Lastly, and most importantly, no concrete evidence has been adduced to show that anyone was criminally responsible for the death of the deceased. In the circumstances, I direct the court file be closed.’
Inheritance Battle is on
To the sisters, though relieved, ‘it felt a bit of an anti-climax’. Mr Ndegwa’s statement failed to even hint at the case’s twisting complexities, far-reaching consequences and the scorched trail it left behind.
Then there is the unresolved question of the Rochdale businessman’s estate. Mr Veevers died without leaving a will. A letter he wrote purportedly outlining his final wishes went missing from a Barclays bank safety deposit box. Promising to be as rancorous as the inquest, the inheritance battle is on the horizon.
For now, the sisters are numb and struggle to make sense of the case that, says Helen, put their ‘lives on hold’ for more than ten years. Actually, she adds, ‘it’s worse than that – our lives were ruined by the most ridiculous, wicked, horrible lie’.
